


Dead Men Tell No Tales

by OrcaTimes



Category: South Park
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 03:27:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4944994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrcaTimes/pseuds/OrcaTimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It had all started two years ago, shortly after Kyle’s twelfth birthday. He wasn't sure how it had happened exactly, no one did, but it had seemed that the corpses in Hells Pass Hospital’s morgue had somehow become reanimated. The dead had run riot, attacking, killing, and turning a good portion of the quiet mountain town into their own.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Men Tell No Tales

Chapter One

The boy sat at the edge of the rooftop, staring up at the stars as he took a long draft of his cigarette. The ember glow from the stub -and the pale moonlight that spilled across the concrete- were the only sources of light from this vantage point. The boy had decided against using a torch to avoid drawing attention to his position but had allowed himself the luxury of a Marlboro in the hopes that it would settle his shaking hands, and keep him alert. By the position of the moon, he estimated that he still had a couple of hours left of being on watch, and he wasn’t about to fall asleep on the job. Keeping watch was a serious occupation, and he had never allowed exhaustion to encumber him no matter how heavy his eyelids drooped.   
He was shivering purely because of the cold. The harsh bite of frost nipped at his extremities even through his winter wear, and a cold wind enveloped him in it’s glacial grasp. Whilst the others were tucked up in sleeping bags below him, he could only watch and wait until it was someone else’s turn to relieve him.  
Kyle extinguished his cigarette on a small patch of snow, and dropped the butt over the edge of the roof. His warm breath clung to the cold air, hanging like a little wisp of smoke, and he adjusted his hat in the hopes of finding a fleeting patch of warmth. He thought of his brother, as he so often did these days, and an involuntary sigh escaped him. Kyle was lucky, in some ways. He had led a full -if a little bizarre- childhood, whereas Ike was having to grow up in a world dominated more by death than it was by life. They say that dead men tell no tales, and up until a couple of years ago, this might have been true. But now the dead walked the earth amongst their living counterparts, the tales of the living had become distorted and horrifying.

It had all started two years ago, shortly after Kyle’s twelfth birthday. He wasn’t sure how it had happened exactly, no one did, but it had seemed that the corpses in Hells Pass Hospital’s morgue had somehow become reanimated. The dead had run riot, attacking, killing, and turning a good portion of the quiet mountain town into their own.  
So many had died, or been turned; his parents included. It still turned his stomach when he thought of his father, blood spewing from the gash in his neck where a zombie had bitten him, or his mother, stumbling around as a reanimated corpse. If this had been TV, Kyle would have shot them both, to put them out of their misery. But this was cold, harsh reality, and he couldn’t bring himself to kill those that had raised him.   
A bunch of kids from South Park had banded together, and an unspoken agreement was immediately formed to leave their hometown. There was too much death. Too much heartbreak.  
Stan, Kenny and Cartman had all survived the past couple of years- Kyle wasn’t sure how, but he was thankful for it. Craig, Token, Trent, and Clyde made up the rest of the older boys. Wendy, Red, Sally and Bebe were all that was left of the older girls. Then there were the younger kids- Ike, Filmore, and Firkle were the only ones that were in this group of stragglers, and Kyle desperately wanted to keep them away from the worst of the violence. Some horrors were unavoidable for the little band of nine-and-ten-year-olds, but the older kids -that is to say, those aged thirteen and up- agreed that the fighting should be left to themselves, unless necessary.  
That wasn’t to say that the younger ones hadn’t been given training. Every single member of their group was trained how to shoot, how to aim, how to silence. They all had a basic understanding of first aid, thanks to Wendy, and a general idea of important survival skills should they be separated for whatever reason. Kyle prided himself on how quickly he could get a fire going, and his unexpected ability to shoot most of his targets squarely in the middle of the forehead. He hadn’t had to dispatch too many of the dead so far, thank god, but he made a point of practising to keep his wits sharp.  
Most of the weaponry and ammo the group carried -and they carried a lot- had come from Jimbo’s Guns. Stan couldn’t bring himself to go inside; by this time he had discovered that both his parents and sister had already fallen prey to the increasing horde of the dead. Kyle agreed to go in for him. He had found no trace of Ned, but Jimbo’s body lay in two pieces on the hardwood floor. Kyle had forced himself to look away from the body as he and Kenny grabbed as many guns and bullets as possible, as well as a few pieces of protective gear. The jacket had been a little big on him at first, but he was growing into it.   
Nearing the age of fifteen, he had developed well. His red hair framed his face in delicate curls, which he often kept pushed back with a thin scrap of cloth tied round his head. His muscles were well defined; the last two years had involved a lot of manual labour, and his strength and stamina had steadily increased over time.   
Although no member of their group was officially in charge, in times of strategic planning, Kyle would be the one that everyone else would look to. He was intelligent, or at least smart enough to figure out how best to avoid the corpses. He hated coming face-to-face with the creatures; even as they clamoured to tear chunks of his flesh out he could still sense a glimpse of a human nature within them. It was hard to put a bullet in the brain of a creature that was once someone’s brother, son, even father.   
He still had nightmares about the day that Timmy had been caught. His wheelchair had run out of power just as they were fighting off a small group of corpses, and Kyle hadn’t even realised until he’d heard Timmy’s screams. He’d tried to run back -though Lord knows why- but Stan had grabbed him by the hand and bodily pulled him away. Kyle still felt guilty, despite the fact that there wasn’t anything anyone could have done. They knew by this point that if you get bit, you die. There were no ifs, no buts. You’d get sick, you’d die, and you’d come back as one of those things. Kyle’d had to look away as one of the other boys shot Timmy squarely in the forehead, purely because it wasn’t right to let him suffer. It seemed totally unfair to Kyle that a kid that had been through so much and yet had remained so sanguine should die this way.   
Sometimes it was hard to carry on, when nobody knew when or even if this would ever end, and Kyle always found it amazing how much the human spirit could endure without ever giving up.

There was never much to do during a night-watch. More than a few times it had been suggested that perhaps they didn’t need one in their weekly group meetings, but Kyle and a couple of others had been adamant that it was necessary. The moment they let their guard down would be the moment that everything would go wrong. He would be lying if he said that it was easy to sit up at the dead of night -while everyone else was cosy and warm in their beds- and constantly scan the desolate horizon, but when you lived in a world where the enemy was an army of the dead, laziness is not an option.  
He stood, and stretched his aching limbs. When they’d come to this area, they’d cleared out the majority of the zombie population. It was a remote area, and nowadays they only had the odd straggler to contend with. Kyle sometimes felt as though they were pushing their luck by staying on one place so long -it had been around ten months now- but they had a good thing going. It was a small and rural town, with only one decent sized retail store. All those months ago, this had been where they’d chosen to camp for a week, two at the most.   
But once they’d discovered how easy it was to barricade and secure the store, they had kind of just stuck with it. They had talked many times about trying to fix up some of the small homes dotted around the town to regain some normality and privacy, but Kyle got the feeling that the majority of the group felt safer when they were all together. He knew that he certainly did.   
Making the store -or the base, as they’d come to call it- safe and more habitable had taken some time. There was no electricity by the time they’d arrived, so every refrigerated or frozen item of food needed to be removed and destroyed. It had taken a long time to get rid of the rotting smell that had lingered. They’d set up their sleeping area on the second floor. This way, should the corpses somehow break in at night, they’d have more time to rouse and retrieve a weapon, which were kept separately from their sleeping areas after Kenny had nearly blown his own head off. The people with the best aim slept closest to the weapons, and the fastest runners and lightest sleepers were on the edge closest to the stairs. All the younger kids slept in the middle of the circle, protected by their peers.   
There was plenty of dried and tinned food to eat, but sometimes Kyle missed fresh fruits and vegetables. They’d planted a few seeds in a small allotment just outside the store, but nothing had sprouted just yet. But still, he had high hopes for the future. He knew that nothing lasts forever, but for the time being, everything was well, and there was no point in worrying until they had to. It was one thing thinking ahead, but another to stress about what he couldn’t change. 

He often considered their options, sitting up on that rooftop. They could build a big fence all around the town, maybe electrify it somehow. There was a river that ran through, maybe they could build some sort of generator. They could hunt, maybe fish. They’d been sitting on their asses, just coasting through, for far too long. It was about time they started to build themselves a new life.   
If not, they could move on. He wondered about maybe finding an island somewhere. But there would be no medical supplies other than what they bought, and add that to the fact that they wouldn’t know whether or not it was actually deserted till they got there, it maybe wouldn’t be the best plan. 

”Hey, Ky.” The deep voice that floated up from the stairwell made him jump. “Anything out there?”   
“Nah, pretty quiet night.” Kyle stood up to acknowledge Token. He pulled a Marlboro from the packet and offered it to his friend, who took one with a nod of thanks. They sat for a few minutes in silence, smoking and looking out at the view. It was 3am, and the the sky was as black as an ink spilled across a white canvas. Kyle took one final draft of his cigarette, and threw it over the edge.   
“Night, Kyle.”  
“Night, Token.” He tried to be quiet as he made his way down to bed, seeking out Ike as he did so. Only a tuft of black hair was visible over the top of the sleeping bag containing his brother. Kyle sighed and stripped down to his white t-shirt and jeans, and slipped into bed. Warmth and sleep enveloped him, and his last thought before slipping into a blissful state of unconsciousness was of his little brother and of the life that he hoped Ike would someday get to lead.


End file.
